It was fifty years ago last year, on August 18, 1966, that the battle of
Long Tan, one of the most ferocious in the Australian campaign in Vietnam, was fought in a rubber plantation five kilometres from the newly operational Task Force Base in Nui Dat. The 105 Australians and three New Zealanders of Delta Company, 6RAR, fought a North Vietnamese Regiment of 1400 men plus another 750 local troops.

The battle lasted four hours, from 3.40 pm until 7 pm, when the Vietnamese retreated with heavy casualties. The Australians had prevailed, but the cost was high. Seventeen died (the average age was 21) and 25 were wounded, many seriously.

In what she describes as a “semi-verbatim” play, writer Verity Laughton has painstakingly gathered first-hand interview material, as well as official sources, to retell the experiences, not only of the soldiers under fire, but Vietnamese perspectives also. It is a compelling text, anchored in authentic witness, but skilfully shaped as narrative as well. The voices of real people speak their (sometimes conflicting) versions of events and emotions, and this outstanding Brink production, commandingly directed by Chris Drummond, honours both their courage and their candour.

In 1918, not quite fifty years before the events of Long Tan, the English soldier poet, Wilfred Owen wrote: “My subject is War and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.” This play is also about the pity of war, and the drama is in the pity.

Staging a battle in a theatre is perilous task and any attempt at sustained realism is hostage to gesture and cliché. But it is precisely because Drummond and his creative team are not re-creating Hacksaw Ridge that it is so theatrically memorable.